As of yesterday, all of the first edition of Tell Me About Yourself has appeared in this blog. In tomorrow’s entry, we’ll begin the serialization all over again.
(QUINTESSENTIAL CAREERS: DeLand, FL) - To rally those who have lost their jobs or are facing
possible job loss in the current devastated economic climate, Quintessential Careers has created Job Action Day,
to be implemented on Monday, Nov. 3. Job Action Day 2008 aims to empower workers and job-seekers to take
proactive steps to shore up their job and career outlook, said Quintessential
Careers Founder and Publisher Dr. Randall S. Hansen.
“For job-seekers,” Hansen said, “Job Action Day is a chance to take a break from the daily grind of job-hunting to take a look at the bigger picture of their careers and job-search strategies. It’s a day to strategize plans for developing new job and career options and devising new and better ways to track down job leads and position themselves for employment opportunities.”
For workers facing possible job loss, Job Action Day is a time “to not only examine their current job and employer, but also evaluate both the stability of that job and employer as well as their personal fulfillment with their jobs,” Hansen said. “It’s a day to take stock of their careers and develop a plan for their next career steps.”
Hansen said he deliberately set Job Action Day 2008 for the eve of the U.S. presidential election to encourage voters to think about job creation and the avoidance of further job losses as they cast their votes. Beyond the election, Hansen said, “workers and job-seekers must hold the next president’s feet to the fire.” Echoing Hillary Rodham Clinton’s battle cry at a recent rally in Orlando, FL, the concept of “Jobs, Baby, Jobs” must be a top priority for the new leader, Hansen said.
Quintessential Careers will mark Job Action Day 2008 with service-oriented articles and blog entries to provide workers and job-seekers with information, ideas, and concrete steps that they can take to secure their futures — both in the short-term and the long-term.
In addition, the Quintessential Careers family of blogs, including the Quintessential Careers Blog, Career Doctor Blog, Quintessential Resume and Cover Letter Tips Blog, and A Storied Career, will feature Job Action Day entries.
Hansen has invited bloggers in the employment and careers sector to join in blogging on Job Action Day about the importance of being proactive in their jobs and careers.
Pointing to a hurting U.S. economy — and ailing economies around the globe — along with daily announcements of employer retrenchments, mergers, and layoffs, Hansen explained that “no job is safe in these situations, but opportunities for hiring and promotions still exist - under the right conditions and with the right strategies.” Job Action Day is intended to empower workers and job-seekers to confront the economic climate and take control for a brighter career future, Hansen said.
I learned yesterday that the book serialized here, Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling That Propels Careers, will be published by JIST Publishing. 
The book is the non-scholarly companion to my doctoral dissertation, so I am thrilled to have it accepted for publication. A common goal of academics is to have their dissertation research published. I’ve had marginal success in publishing the scholarly portion, so it’s very satisfying to publish the non-scholarly.
I’m also gratified because the entire impetus for starting this blog’s parent blog, A Storied Career, was my interest in the value of storytelling as the way to advance one’s career (in A Storied Career, I’ve obviously branched out to many other kinds of applied storytelling). Although other authors and even scholars have written small pieces about this connection, I’m the only one I know about who has made it a centerpiece of research.
A sister site of A Storied Career, Quintessential Careers, has published Tell Me About Yourself as a quasi-ebook under its Quintessential Careers Press imprint, and, of course, I have also been serializing the book in this blog. Both these versions are free. Since I don’t know whether JIST will feel kindly to having free versions out there in cyberspace, interested readers may want to take that opportunity now.
This blog serializes the first edition of the book, Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling that Propels Careers (shown below). It is a blog-within-a-blog, and its parent blog is A Storied Career.
